Essay: Spiritual Retracing - Principle Overview (Part I)

[AshvinP]

By 'liberal ideology', I intend to convey whatever is that channel which constricts the transformation of mental states from those exploring the inner value of Western civilization in so far as the latter emphasizes individual agency and sovereignty, hierarchical structure, moral ideals, inner perfection, and related dimensions of being (all grouped around the Christ impulse, of course).

Hein??
Basically you are taking the Christ impluse - the wellspring of Good - and saying: "I call liberal everything that derails people's mental states away from it". Of course, if you define liberal as the oppsite of good, that is, evil, well, there's no wondering that there's correlation with resistance to living thinking. One can even be quite sure that there is causation. I am going to highlight that article a third time, and this time I would ask you explicitely (I believe you previosuly implied you read it) do you agree with it?

https://johnrollinson.substack.com/p/th ... -movements

Sure, I agree with it. It follows the broad principles of esoteric science, the Ahr-Lu archetypal influences, which of course are related to more particular political manifestations. But I am not even speaking of democrat v. republican or liberal v. conservative in that sense. I probably should not have even used these political distinctions to begin with - I just wanted a convenient conceptual label to focus my intuition into.

I am simply conveying a phenomenology right now - the phenomenology of my interactions with people as I try to convey the phenomenology of spiritual activity and their reactions to it. Many of these reactions fit into a pattern of instinctive thinking that I focused into the conceptual label 'liberal ideology', but it could just as easily be focused into some other conceptual label. We could call it 'Western cultural cynicism'. I am just trying to point to a certain constellation of thinking habits that, for whatever reason at this point in history, often fall on the 'liberal' spectrum of political ideology.

With that said, I wonder what you think about the reasoning in the rest of my comment

[lorenzop]

Or in lieu of essays, one or more individuals could step forward and speak with authority on ‘intuitive thinking’. Speak on how they developed higher cognition and demonstrate some success with it. Perhaps indicate how we would know their intuitions ring true. Anyone here ready to step up?

Lorenzo, your thinking self has wiggled out of certain inner constraints. Through your practice, your inner self has differentiated from some of the inner constraints of desires, vain goals, and so on. This is already higher cognition than what most have, who flow merrily or not so merrily in the rigid channels of existence that Ashvin depicts. How would you demonstrate some success with this to those freefallers? How would they know that your intuitions ring true? How would they know that you haven't simply given up life and you try to convince yourself (and maybe others) that this is somehow a more fundamental state of existence, bringing you closer to Truth?

In part I am mirroring Marcos who mentioned that he would like to see some folks with developed intuitions step forward. This would be more effective than essays detailing theoretical possibilities. Where are are all the followers of Steiner, where are the successful anthroposophists - or has it proven to be too difficult to develop high functioning intuitive skills - or are these intuitions private and not to be shared?

[AshvinP]

Or in lieu of essays, one or more individuals could step forward and speak with authority on ‘intuitive thinking’. Speak on how they developed higher cognition and demonstrate some success with it. Perhaps indicate how we would know their intuitions ring true. Anyone here ready to step up?

Lorenzo, your thinking self has wiggled out of certain inner constraints. Through your practice, your inner self has differentiated from some of the inner constraints of desires, vain goals, and so on. This is already higher cognition than what most have, who flow merrily or not so merrily in the rigid channels of existence that Ashvin depicts. How would you demonstrate some success with this to those freefallers? How would they know that your intuitions ring true? How would they know that you haven't simply given up life and you try to convince yourself (and maybe others) that this is somehow a more fundamental state of existence, bringing you closer to Truth?

In part I am mirroring Marcos who mentioned that he would like to see some folks with developed intuitions step forward. This would be more effective than essays detailing theoretical possibilities. Where are are all the followers of Steiner, where are the successful anthroposophists - or has it proven to be too difficult to develop high functioning intuitive skills - or are these intuitions private and not to be shared?

Lorenzo, imagine someone is fully initiated into the modern mystery such that he is not only exploring the structure of spiritual reality in his daytime thinking, but is in a fully conscious state every night during sleep from whence he can artistically contribute the very 'lines of force' along which the Earthly destiny of many beings unfolds. I know this is probably a highly off-putting thing to imagine for you, but just imagine it for a second. Do you think this individuality would also be on Facebook, X, YouTube, etc. trying to build a reputation, selling subscriptions and books, making videos, trying to prove to you and Marco that higher cognitive realities exist? (btw I don't remember Marco ever questioning whether such realities exist, only indicating that he believed they are entirely discontinuous with what we experience as 'logical thinking').

This is just one of many questions that could be asked to try and highlight the flawed presuppositions in the questions you are asking, which are many. The only difficult part of developing intuitive thinking further and further is sacrificing these convenient assumptions, beliefs, and presuppositions about 'how reality works' and 'what it means to be successful'. Actually, there are many YT channels and Substack publications oriented around spiritual science, some of which have been shared here, but that should not be pursued to 'be successful', but rather out of sheer love for the truth and for others to participate in that truth. The higher intuitions have been shared here over and over again. The only question is whether you are standing in relation to them in the same way as the materialist stands in relation to the teachings of Ramana Maharishi, feeling the latter is simply delusional and has given up on the 'real world' and 'real life'.

[Federica]

Sure, I agree with it. It follows the broad principles of esoteric science, the Ahr-Lu archetypal influences, which of course are related to more particular political manifestations. But I am not even speaking of democrat v. republican or liberal v. conservative in that sense. I probably should not have even used these political distinctions to begin with - I just wanted a convenient conceptual label to focus my intuition into.


I am simply conveying a phenomenology right now - the phenomenology of my interactions with people as I try to convey the phenomenology of spiritual activity and their reactions to it. Many of these reactions fit into a pattern of instinctive thinking that I focused into the conceptual label 'liberal ideology', but it could just as easily be focused into some other conceptual label. We could call it 'Western cultural cynicism'. I am just trying to point to a certain constellation of thinking habits that, for whatever reason at this point in history, often fall on the 'liberal' spectrum of political ideology.


With that said, I wonder what you think about the reasoning in the rest of my comment

You are right, I haven't developed. Here's the rest of your comment:

It is true that all ideologies are a hindrance in so far as they channelize our thinking into rigid conceptual boxes and cut off deeper avenues of exploration, but I notice a gradation within this zone of mental constraints as well. It's just my experience that people enchanted by 'liberal' ideology (which correlates with modern mystical thinking as well) are not even willing to lend an ear to certain phenomenological considerations - the latter immediately strike them as offensive and disgusting, so that avenue of thinking is permanently closed as long as the ideology remains firm.


I think the more conservative-leaning ideologies also find it difficult to expand thinking states into the inner life, but it seems to me that they are at least willing to listen to what someone has to say for a little while. They seem too respectful of free-thinking and individual autonomy to feel that anything they instinctively disagree with should be entirely shut out of their consciousness and out of societal discourse more generally. It's pretty easy to notice this in the US/Canadian cultural discourse as well - the conservative ideological side is significantly more willing to entertain the views of others in a reasoned and level-headed way.


That's the issue that I noticed in Chad's comments as well. Hopefully, this is not the case for him specifically, but speaking generally, people who think about the results of spiritual scientific research in such a way are unlikely to ever give themselves a chance to evaluate it more expansively and fairly. Everything they encounter when reading further will only reinforce the 'racism' and 'misogyny' and whatnot that they suspected. The ideology gets to the point where the mere act of making evolutionary distinctions and tracing their threads of lawfulness is viewed as inherently corrupted.


But, that being said, I realize this reasoning is based on my limited sampling so far, and I mostly have exposure to the 'liberal' side since I am on these idealist forums. I am sure things wouldn't go so well if I joined a Christian fundamentalist forum and started discussing esoteric science Although my guess is still that, if it was approached phenomenologically, some people would at least listen to what was expressed for a while and would not ban me for simply expressing my views.

Because it so happens that I deal and discuss with many different people from many different cultures and environments, I am familiar with the attitude you describe. Trying to put myself in the shoes of those who express it (and I agree that, all in all, “liberal” is not the right label for it) here’s what I find. It’s not so much because of cynicism or mistrust that they don’t lend an ear to your invitations to introspect phenomenologically. I rather believe their rejection originates from a feeling of a sort of galactic loneliness. More and more people are collapsing under the burden of the dissociated bubble of consciousness. The more BK theorizes it and disseminates its message, the more Rupert Spira utters the words "separate self", the more these become heavy realities for more and more people. For many, the "boundary" has come to constitute an undetected but permanent attack to the neutrality and stability of soul, sort of a finishing blow to the hope that life is worth something, and leads somewhere. And so when they read your essay, and begin to glance at the phenomenological task, many just don’t have enough bandwidth to set up for even more solitude, isolation, and the lone work that phenomenology inevitably requires. Since they don’t suspect, let alone see, the spiritual interconnectendness of reality, the prospect of focused introspection that you present them with sounds as terrible as a maximum security prison.

The deeply unsatisfied longing for spiritual connection emerges on the surface of consciousness as a longing for camaraderie, for a feeling on being on the same boat, for gregariousness. And so when discussing core questions, questions that agitate the soul around themes such as our reason for being, and the meaning of life, they don’t want to be taught, instructed, or equipped. Instead, they want to feel that you are side by side with them. They want to be approached by a fellow being, who has, and shares, similar struggles and existential quests, to receive a sense of solidarity, so that the loneliness can be appeased. I believe an example of this mood is in Lorenzo’s last posts. He wants you and Cleric to "share". He doesn't accept that you 'coldly' indicate methodologies, and conceptualize from afar, through essays and objective communications. I believe that Lorenzo, Marco, Chad, and anyone else who instinctively rejects the phenomenological approach through the attitudes you describe, would like you to open your souls to them, that you speak of your own struggles, questions, longings, experiments, feelings, vicissitudes, advances and achievements. No matter how objectively insightful and illuminating the essays may be, they crave to find commonalities - a "mirror", as Lorenzo said. In that reflection there’s the hope to be relieved of the boundary’s heavy yoke.

Trying to tie that in with your sense that the attitude correlates with liberal ideology: this hyper-loneliness explains not only the rejection of phenomenology, but also, more generally, the calls for "authenticity", "vulnerability", "servant, non-hierarchical leadership" (it reminds me of the recent business best-seller "Leading without authority") and, of course, "inclusion", with all its editions and add-ons. All these trends originally come from understandable and positive drives to some extent, but have, through recent years swelled up, added up, and degenerated. There's been the pronoun trend, the "does it work for you" trend, the "how to say no" trend, and many other similar trends, that are now resulting in a sort of madness of inclusivity, a deconstruction, in practice a whole range of bizarre and excessive phenomena, like for example - it's recent news from last month - the dean of the University of Trento, Italy, has now decided that from now on, all administrative paperwork in the university shall refer to individuals, no matter their gender, by means of an extensive feminine gender. You don't have that in English, but in Italian grammar all nouns have either a feminine or a masculine grammatical gender, for example the word "dean" ends differently depending on whether the dean is a man or a woman. So imagine, now everyone gets the feminine epithet, and so the dean (a man), and everyone else in the university's official documents for that matter, is referred to in writing by means of feminine nouns and pronouns. From now on. Like writing in the press: "Actress Tom Cruise's new role" as an appropriate way to create "inclusivity". This seems to me a clearly degenerative take on the innovative essence of "liberal"

Back to the initial question, I imagine that the ones who have a definite preference for conservative political views tend to be more open to your arguments, not because of their political orientation directly, but only because, for personal reasons, they suffer less from spiritual isolation and loneliness, hence they don't feel attraction for those narratives and ideologies of gregariousness, hence they lean towards conservatism.

What do you think, does that make any sense to you?

[lorenzop]

Lorenzo, your thinking self has wiggled out of certain inner constraints. Through your practice, your inner self has differentiated from some of the inner constraints of desires, vain goals, and so on. This is already higher cognition than what most have, who flow merrily or not so merrily in the rigid channels of existence that Ashvin depicts. How would you demonstrate some success with this to those freefallers? How would they know that your intuitions ring true? How would they know that you haven't simply given up life and you try to convince yourself (and maybe others) that this is somehow a more fundamental state of existence, bringing you closer to Truth?

In part I am mirroring Marcos who mentioned that he would like to see some folks with developed intuitions step forward. This would be more effective than essays detailing theoretical possibilities. Where are are all the followers of Steiner, where are the successful anthroposophists - or has it proven to be too difficult to develop high functioning intuitive skills - or are these intuitions private and not to be shared?

Lorenzo, imagine someone is fully initiated into the modern mystery such that he is not only exploring the structure of spiritual reality in his daytime thinking, but is in a fully conscious state every night during sleep from whence he can artistically contribute the very 'lines of force' along which the Earthly destiny of many beings unfolds. I know this is probably a highly off-putting thing to imagine for you, but just imagine it for a second. Do you think this individuality would also be on Facebook, X, YouTube, etc. trying to build a reputation, selling subscriptions and books, making videos, trying to prove to you and Marco that higher cognitive realities exist? (btw I don't remember Marco ever questioning whether such realities exist, only indicating that he believed they are entirely discontinuous with what we experience as 'logical thinking').

This is just one of many questions that could be asked to try and highlight the flawed presuppositions in the questions you are asking, which are many. The only difficult part of developing intuitive thinking further and further is sacrificing these convenient assumptions, beliefs, and presuppositions about 'how reality works' and 'what it means to be successful'. Actually, there are many YT channels and Substack publications oriented around spiritual science, some of which have been shared here, but that should not be pursued to 'be successful', but rather out of sheer love for the truth and for others to participate in that truth. The higher intuitions have been shared here over and over again. The only question is whether you are standing in relation to them in the same way as the materialist stands in relation to the teachings of Ramana Maharishi, feeling the latter is simply delusional and has given up on the 'real world' and 'real life'.

I wasn’t thinking hawking t-shirts, but in general if one comes across a good thing, one wants to share it. I am not hearing of folks perceiving hierarchies of beings or intuitions re the future of climate change, and being a practical man, I am suspicious.

[AshvinP]

In part I am mirroring Marcos who mentioned that he would like to see some folks with developed intuitions step forward. This would be more effective than essays detailing theoretical possibilities. Where are are all the followers of Steiner, where are the successful anthroposophists - or has it proven to be too difficult to develop high functioning intuitive skills - or are these intuitions private and not to be shared?

Lorenzo, imagine someone is fully initiated into the modern mystery such that he is not only exploring the structure of spiritual reality in his daytime thinking, but is in a fully conscious state every night during sleep from whence he can artistically contribute the very 'lines of force' along which the Earthly destiny of many beings unfolds. I know this is probably a highly off-putting thing to imagine for you, but just imagine it for a second. Do you think this individuality would also be on Facebook, X, YouTube, etc. trying to build a reputation, selling subscriptions and books, making videos, trying to prove to you and Marco that higher cognitive realities exist? (btw I don't remember Marco ever questioning whether such realities exist, only indicating that he believed they are entirely discontinuous with what we experience as 'logical thinking').

This is just one of many questions that could be asked to try and highlight the flawed presuppositions in the questions you are asking, which are many. The only difficult part of developing intuitive thinking further and further is sacrificing these convenient assumptions, beliefs, and presuppositions about 'how reality works' and 'what it means to be successful'. Actually, there are many YT channels and Substack publications oriented around spiritual science, some of which have been shared here, but that should not be pursued to 'be successful', but rather out of sheer love for the truth and for others to participate in that truth. The higher intuitions have been shared here over and over again. The only question is whether you are standing in relation to them in the same way as the materialist stands in relation to the teachings of Ramana Maharishi, feeling the latter is simply delusional and has given up on the 'real world' and 'real life'.

I wasn’t thinking hawking t-shirts, but in general if one comes across a good thing, one wants to share it. I am not hearing of folks perceiving hierarchies of beings or intuitions re the future of climate change, and being a practical man, I am suspicious.

I was going to say you are hearing it already and link this post, but then I noticed you joined the forum on the same day it was written! So perhaps you never saw it, in which case you are in for a treat.

Let's consider a little contrived example in order to throw some additional light on the matters. Let's imagine that we want to build a building. We have strong faith in idealism and think that we'll be assisting humanity's evolution if we build a hall where conferences can be held and ideas exchanged. Yet we are no construction engineer so don't know how to build it. Let's now consider a being living on a higher stage of consciousness than we. Such beings actually exist. The higher beings closest to man are called Angels in Christian Esoterism. The name is not that important. We can encounter these beings even if we don't know how they are called in different traditions. When we cross the threshold of higher cognition, we already find ourselves in the lowest of three higher stages of consciousness that are available to modern man through the appropriate training. This first stage is the normal state of consciousness for these beings, just as our ordinary intellectual consciousness is the normal state for contemporary man. The Angels don't have physical structure. Their 'coarsest' structure reaches to the life (etheric) processes in Nature. This doesn't mean that they feel limited or unaware of the physical world. On the contrary, they have more understanding of it but need not to be entangled in it and consider the details. As an analogy, we can say that they experience the 'quantum mechanical wave function' of the physical world without the need to decohere/collapse it. Human soul life is an open book for these beings. The soul (astral structure) of men is part of their environment, just as plants and animals are part of our environment. A noble thought, as our idea to build the hall, lives in our astral body and is perceptible to the Angel. We can speak only in metaphorical pictures here.

There is much more and I hope you take some time to work through it. But, at the same time, if we were to present you with a dozen different first-person testimonies of people who have perceived angelic beings via higher cognition, would that make you suddenly interested in doing the hard phenomenological work to develop the faculties yourself? It wouldn't, and it shouldn't!

In fact, it would make most people even more suspicious and recalcitrant. How many people have seen the Virgin Mary over the centuries, while atheist skepticism only grows stronger? The real issue is not how many reports of extraordinary beings we amass, so that we can reflect on and interpret with the intellect, understandably feeling it is just imaginative speculation made to look like 'knowledge'. The issue is the very type of thinking with which we approach all of these topics. One person can read that linked post and find it profound, insightful, and inspiring, another person can read it and say, 'what's the big deal?' or not even realize it is speaking of 'perceiving hierarchies of beings'. How do you explain the difference? Is it that the few who find it insightful have fallen into a well of unsurpassed gullibility for the last few years? Have we fallen victim to a cult and choose to write endlessly about its ideas because we feel it brings us hope and promise, some sense of meaning and purpose to our lives? I am really curious about how you perceive us here on this forum in light of such posts.

[AshvinP]

Sure, I agree with it. It follows the broad principles of esoteric science, the Ahr-Lu archetypal influences, which of course are related to more particular political manifestations. But I am not even speaking of democrat v. republican or liberal v. conservative in that sense. I probably should not have even used these political distinctions to begin with - I just wanted a convenient conceptual label to focus my intuition into.


I am simply conveying a phenomenology right now - the phenomenology of my interactions with people as I try to convey the phenomenology of spiritual activity and their reactions to it. Many of these reactions fit into a pattern of instinctive thinking that I focused into the conceptual label 'liberal ideology', but it could just as easily be focused into some other conceptual label. We could call it 'Western cultural cynicism'. I am just trying to point to a certain constellation of thinking habits that, for whatever reason at this point in history, often fall on the 'liberal' spectrum of political ideology.


With that said, I wonder what you think about the reasoning in the rest of my comment

You are right, I haven't developed. Here's the rest of your comment:

It is true that all ideologies are a hindrance in so far as they channelize our thinking into rigid conceptual boxes and cut off deeper avenues of exploration, but I notice a gradation within this zone of mental constraints as well. It's just my experience that people enchanted by 'liberal' ideology (which correlates with modern mystical thinking as well) are not even willing to lend an ear to certain phenomenological considerations - the latter immediately strike them as offensive and disgusting, so that avenue of thinking is permanently closed as long as the ideology remains firm.


I think the more conservative-leaning ideologies also find it difficult to expand thinking states into the inner life, but it seems to me that they are at least willing to listen to what someone has to say for a little while. They seem too respectful of free-thinking and individual autonomy to feel that anything they instinctively disagree with should be entirely shut out of their consciousness and out of societal discourse more generally. It's pretty easy to notice this in the US/Canadian cultural discourse as well - the conservative ideological side is significantly more willing to entertain the views of others in a reasoned and level-headed way.


That's the issue that I noticed in Chad's comments as well. Hopefully, this is not the case for him specifically, but speaking generally, people who think about the results of spiritual scientific research in such a way are unlikely to ever give themselves a chance to evaluate it more expansively and fairly. Everything they encounter when reading further will only reinforce the 'racism' and 'misogyny' and whatnot that they suspected. The ideology gets to the point where the mere act of making evolutionary distinctions and tracing their threads of lawfulness is viewed as inherently corrupted.


But, that being said, I realize this reasoning is based on my limited sampling so far, and I mostly have exposure to the 'liberal' side since I am on these idealist forums. I am sure things wouldn't go so well if I joined a Christian fundamentalist forum and started discussing esoteric science Although my guess is still that, if it was approached phenomenologically, some people would at least listen to what was expressed for a while and would not ban me for simply expressing my views.

Because it so happens that I deal and discuss with many different people from many different cultures and environments, I am familiar with the attitude you describe. Trying to put myself in the shoes of those who express it (and I agree that, all in all, “liberal” is not the right label for it) here’s what I find. It’s not so much because of cynicism or mistrust that they don’t lend an ear to your invitations to introspect phenomenologically. I rather believe their rejection originates from a feeling of a sort of galactic loneliness. More and more people are collapsing under the burden of the dissociated bubble of consciousness. The more BK theorizes it and disseminates its message, the more Rupert Spira utters the words "separate self", the more these become heavy realities for more and more people. For many, the "boundary" has come to constitute an undetected but permanent attack to the neutrality and stability of soul, sort of a finishing blow to the hope that life is worth something, and leads somewhere. And so when they read your essay, and begin to glance at the phenomenological task, many just don’t have enough bandwidth to set up for even more solitude, isolation, and the lone work that phenomenology inevitably requires. Since they don’t suspect, let alone see, the spiritual interconnectendness of reality, the prospect of focused introspection that you present them with sounds as terrible as a maximum security prison.

The deeply unsatisfied longing for spiritual connection emerges on the surface of consciousness as a longing for camaraderie, for a feeling on being on the same boat, for gregariousness. And so when discussing core questions, questions that agitate the soul around themes such as our reason for being, and the meaning of life, they don’t want to be taught, instructed, or equipped. Instead, they want to feel that you are side by side with them. They want to be approached by a fellow being, who has, and shares, similar struggles and existential quests, to receive a sense of solidarity, so that the loneliness can be appeased. I believe an example of this mood is in Lorenzo’s last posts. He wants you and Cleric to "share". He doesn't accept that you 'coldly' indicate methodologies, and conceptualize from afar, through essays and objective communications. I believe that Lorenzo, Marco, Chad, and anyone else who instinctively rejects the phenomenological approach through the attitudes you describe, would like you to open your souls to them, that you speak of your own struggles, questions, longings, experiments, feelings, vicissitudes, advances and achievements. No matter how objectively insightful and illuminating the essays may be, they crave to find commonalities - a "mirror", as Lorenzo said. In that reflection there’s the hope to be relieved of the boundary’s heavy yoke.

Trying to tie that in with your sense that the attitude correlates with liberal ideology: this hyper-loneliness explains not only the rejection of phenomenology, but also, more generally, the calls for "authenticity", "vulnerability", "servant, non-hierarchical leadership" (it reminds me of the recent business best-seller "Leading without authority") and, of course, "inclusion", with all its editions and add-ons. All these trends originally come from understandable and positive drives to some extent, but have, through recent years swelled up, added up, and degenerated. There's been the pronoun trend, the "does it work for you" trend, the "how to say no" trend, and many other similar trends, that are now resulting in a sort of madness of inclusivity, a deconstruction, in practice a whole range of bizarre and excessive phenomena, like for example - it's recent news from last month - the dean of the University of Trento, Italy, has now decided that from now on, all administrative paperwork in the university shall refer to individuals, no matter their gender, by means of an extensive feminine gender. You don't have that in English, but in Italian grammar all nouns have either a feminine or a masculine grammatical gender, for example the word "dean" ends differently depending on whether the dean is a man or a woman. So imagine, now everyone gets the feminine epithet, and so the dean (a man), and everyone else in the university's official documents for that matter, is referred to in writing by means of feminine nouns and pronouns. From now on. Like writing in the press: "Actress Tom Cruise's new role" as an appropriate way to create "inclusivity". This seems to me a clearly degenerative take on the innovative essence of "liberal"

Back to the initial question, I imagine that the ones who have a definite preference for conservative political views tend to be more open to your arguments, not because of their political orientation directly, but only because, for personal reasons, they suffer less from spiritual isolation and loneliness, hence they don't feel attraction for those narratives and ideologies of gregariousness, hence they lean towards conservatism.

What do you think, does that make any sense to you?

Yes, it makes great sense, thanks! It eloquently describes the constellation of feeling-thinking tendencies in this domain that I was clumsily trying to express. And it also helps me gain a greater sensitivity to the nuances of those tendencies.

Particularly - "And so when discussing core questions, questions that agitate the soul around themes such as our reason for being, and the meaning of life, they don’t want to be taught, instructed, or equipped. Instead, they want to feel that you are side by side with them."

That is a consistent throughline that I have found in the interactions as well. Again, I think this and many of the other aspects you expressed also deeply relate to cynicism with the Christ impulse. I'm not using that to mean synonymous with seeking the Good, but rather the specific way it has manifested in the course of the last 2,000 years through Western civilization. This partial manifestation of the Christ impulse is not inherently good, it can also become extremely one-sided and an obstacle to higher development, for ex. for those souls who remain chained to ecclesiastical traditions and dogmas, or who adopt a 'slave morality' and become quite resigned and resentful in the face of worldly happenings. It can also be expressed pathologically in rigid hierarchies where all sorts of corruption are justified in the name of 'religious ideals'.

Yet I also see the resistance from that one-sidedness as more easily navigated on the inner path than its opposite, which is expressed often in the form of cynicism toward the hierarchical structure of Western civilization and the soul forces of admiration, reverence, and devotion to the wisdom and examples of those who may stand at a higher stage of development than oneself. This inner stance simply dreads the prospect that others have already tread further on a path of evolutionary development than we have and therefore have something to teach us, even if it is patently obvious from the facts and healthy reasoning, and even if the teaching is how we ourselves can be raised to higher stages of understanding and thereby overcome the disparities.

[Cleric K]

I have been working on an essay which will be broken into a few sections. It is still a work in progress, but the first section is mostly complete and I will post the first part here. The first section is mostly an overview of the principled foundation for the intuitive thinking path, a broad survey of why it is so important in our time and what it may entail. The essay draws on many familiar metaphors offered by Cleric over time, but hopefully, it is a somewhat unique angle and has a few new examples or illustrations of the inner phenomenological exploration. It should help reinforce the intuitive orientation to that inner landscape and serve as more preparation for Cleric's upcoming essays. Any feedback is welcome!

Thank you, Ashvin, for this work!

To me, the most inspiring thing is that we're gradually coming to a shared language that we can use to speak freely and concretely about inner realities. If there's one thing to center all this into, I guess it would be in the way of grasping existence as the inner flow of metamorphosis of the World state (of which we are part even in a materialistic view). Being able to see our thinking process as notes along this musical flow is the main development that is needed if we're to transition from the intellectual-thinker-outside-reality (thinking from the blindspot) to being one with the flow of reality.

Thank you also for pointing attention to Whitehead's negative questions. There's much depth in these ideas. This is actually connected with one of the topics that is most exciting to me. My own research goes quite slowly but I hope in this lifetime something more definite will come out.

I'm speaking about what in our Darwinian conception looks like the chain of mutating species that transform from chemical soup, through single-celled organisms, all the way to a human being. An interesting question that science and philosophy are concerned with, especially after the discoveries of QM, is whether we can speak of definite reality without a cognizing consciousness (the premise of realism). In this sense, can we speak of an Earthly realm populated only with lower organisms if there are no physical beings capable of perceiving and cognizing such an environment?

My present investigations lead to the view that the fossil record, for example, takes shape precisely in the way of the negative questions. As human consciousness crystallizes in the Earthly sphere, together with it crystallize the physical states of the Earth that are consistent with our state here and now. Every constellation of physical facts seems as part of an infinite chain of causes and effects.

This doesn't mean that the past is arbitrary. In fact, the primordial animals do exist in astral and etheric forms. These are like wavefunctions containing many possibilities. Yet when the 'negative questions' of our human crystallization were filtering the physical states, together with that are filtered also the possibilities of these beings that are consistent with our present. And it's amazing that this whole process takes place every time we incarnate.

This may seem crazy from today's perspective, but it's actually fully compatible with the facts of science. We only need to learn to think properly.

[AshvinP]

My present investigations lead to the view that the fossil record, for example, takes shape precisely in the way of the negative questions. As human consciousness crystallizes in the Earthly sphere, together with it crystallize the physical states of the Earth that are consistent with our state here and now. Every constellation of physical facts seems as part of an infinite chain of causes and effects.

This doesn't mean that the past is arbitrary. In fact, the primordial animals do exist in astral and etheric forms. These are like wavefunctions containing many possibilities. Yet when the 'negative questions' of our human crystallization were filtering the physical states, together with that are filtered also the possibilities of these beings that are consistent with our present. And it's amazing that this whole process takes place every time we incarnate.

This may seem crazy from today's perspective, but it's actually fully compatible with the facts of science. We only need to learn to think properly.

Thank you Cleric for the feedback and these very interesting thoughts. I have had some dim intuition along the same lines.

That the whole temporally extended 'World' we are familiar with, which is consistent with our current state of being, incarnates with us each time is indeed amazing to contemplate. It also hints how our understanding of the 'past' will expand into radically different forms as the aperture of our present Earthly consciousness grows. I guess that is what is commonly known as 'learning more about the past' as it unfolds at a snail's pace within the conceptual convolution of consciousness - we start to 'discover' and notice aspects of ancient civilizations and primordial conditions of Earth that were aliased before. Except this whole process is externalized and the past is seen as some fixed reality while only our understanding of it is changing. If our thinking were to expand into the imaginative depth, however, the true relationship would become much more obvious, that the 'storylines' of the past grow along with our thinking consciousness.

I wonder if there is any accessible metaphor for this aspect. For example, it reminds me of a video game that is programmed with various different storylines, and depending on what path of exploration the player chooses, a different storyline will be projected that fits with that particular path in the game. I don't know if such a game exists. Or perhaps the choose your own adventure stories that you previously used as a metaphor for the QM overlapping storylines. Of course, the metaphor itself doesn't 'prove' the principle at work in natural history, but only helps highlight the non-linear temporal dynamics involved.

Actually, I have already written some discussion loosely around this aspect in a subsequent part. I employ the IK metaphor and then add the following, which may be helpful.

Here we have two eyes on a vertical axis – the imaginative ‘eye’ and the sensory-conceptual eye. The retracing process is nothing more complicated than becoming conscious of what we are always doing; the inverse kinematic equations we are always intuitively ‘solving in the opposite direction’ to realize certain desired states of being. Our imaginative ‘eye’ lives in the ‘wavefunction’ of future potential while our sensory eye lives in the already collapsed memory states of the past. Even from a standard scientific perspective, we are always physically perceiving the past since it takes time for light to reach the eye. Through the coordination of these eyes within the present moment, a connecting stream of events ‘decoheres’ from the potential such that the past is made to coincide with the future.

We are becoming familiar with how the causal relationship which apparently holds good in outer (sensory) life is inverted for the inner life – there, cause truly comes after effect.

[Federica]

Again, I think this and many of the other aspects you expressed also deeply relate to cynicism with the Christ impulse. I'm not using that to mean synonymous with seeking the Good, but rather the specific way it has manifested in the course of the last 2,000 years through Western civilization. This partial manifestation of the Christ impulse is not inherently good, it can also become extremely one-sided and an obstacle to higher development, for ex. for those souls who remain chained to ecclesiastical traditions and dogmas, or who adopt a 'slave morality' and become quite resigned and resentful in the face of worldly happenings. It can also be expressed pathologically in rigid hierarchies where all sorts of corruption are justified in the name of 'religious ideals'.


Yet I also see the resistance from that one-sidedness as more easily navigated on the inner path than its opposite, which is expressed often in the form of cynicism toward the hierarchical structure of Western civilization and the soul forces of admiration, reverence, and devotion to the wisdom and examples of those who may stand at a higher stage of development than oneself. This inner stance simply dreads the prospect that others have already tread further on a path of evolutionary development than we have and therefore have something to teach us, even if it is patently obvious from the facts and healthy reasoning, and even if the teaching is how we ourselves can be raised to higher stages of understanding and thereby overcome the disparities.

I’m not entirely clear how you intend the Christ impulse then. If you are speaking of the evolution of Western civilization as it has unfolded after the coming of Christ, to the present day, then the attitude of those who are disgusted by phenomenology is a part of it too, by the same token the conservative worldview is. Why would “individual agency and sovereignty, hierarchical structure, moral ideals, inner perfection“ that is, the values of conservatism, constitute the (“partial, not inherently good", but still) only manifestation of the Christ impulse?

Again, I think that these values you mention are only a partial manifestation of the Christ impulse, firstly because there can be ideology (as you describe) but also, secondly, because they don’t exhaust the spectrum of Western values emerging from the Christ impulse in historical sense. Invention is also part of it. By the way, agency is not an exclusive conservative value. You can't have a spirit of invention without agency. The same applies to striving for inner perfection (and there would be more to say). Of course, ideology and weakness can vice all that, but this is true for the entire spectrum of Western values.

In this context, what does cynicism for the Christ impulse mean? If you put exclusively the conservative values behind the impulse, well yes, the liberal impulse will have to be said to have cynicism for the Christ impulse, since it doesn’t focus on the values of tradition, turned to the past, but on those of progression. Safe that, as said, I don’t see why only one side of the two (in their elevated, archetypal meaning, not as ideologies) should alone deserve the quality of representative of Western values "as manifested in the course of the last 2,000 years through Western civilization".

The fact that resistance to living thinking is less present on the side of conservative ideology than it is on the side of liberal ideology seems logical to me, since conservative are less struck by spiritual loneliness, because they find some comfort and protection within the structure provided by formal authority. However, that this allows for less resistance is also just accidental (not grounded in affinity for the phenomenology), and doesn't grant better probability of higher development. Just because authority is not resisted in conservative ideology as it is in liberal ideology doesn’t mean that the indications in your essays have better chances to be followed up in conservative circles.

The reason is that submission to authority, when accepted as part of 'how the world works', isn't per se of much help to exploring and applying the phenomenological indications. What counts is the ability to recognize and respect authority independently, through agency, not by ascription, titles or conformism to external status quo. And this independence and agency are not an exclusive prerogative of the conservative worldview. So I believe that the more easily navigated resistance on the side of the conservative spectrum is true, as such, but also a superficial indicator of inner potential, which doesn’t affect the real chances of higher development. These chances do not depend on political preferences.